This part of the story of this trip is one I can’t believe really happened.

We agreed as a group that we were gonna ask the people 4x4 camping if there was any way they’d be willing to take us off the river the following day in exchange for beer, gas or any other possession we had with us. None of us could face the thought of a 3rd twenty mile day into a tougher head wind through even more open water. Not only were these people willing to take us off the river, they were kind enough to ask us to join them for dinner and drinks that night.

I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced southern hospitality from a complete stranger, but if you do in the future, I can only hope that its as incredible as our experience was. We spend the night stuffing our faces on beef fajitas, wild spanish goat, all the fixins you could want and topped the feast off with dutch oven pineapple cobbler. Compared to the pop tarts and peanut butter tortillas we had eaten the night before, this was as near 5 star cuisine you could get without being inside a restaurant.

Stories were swapped, jokes were told and my heart couldn’t be more full. The group we were sharing a meal with couldn’t have been more kind, generous or fun to be around. Sometimes plan B can be even better than plan A ever was.

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